This thesis addresses the presence and role of critical aesthetic practices by cultural practitioners and creative technologists in addressing cultures of technology in contemporary African societies. Nairobi and Johannesburg are used as primary case studies through which a closer understanding of these unique cultures of technology are unpacked. The learning established from the findings of the cases is applied to understanding the concerns of cultures of technology within these and other African contexts. In this, attention is placed on latent neo-colonialism found in the relationship between African cultures and the networked global information economy being led by technology practices. This research starts by responding to a paucity of prior investigation in the field, and thereby aims to identify an ontological framework for Africa’s cultural engagement with technology. The primary research is preceded by an introductory chapter that draws on African knowledge theory and a critique of historical scholarship that exists on African experiences with technology. The primary research is predicated on this critical framework and uses it as a foundation from which to address concerns around contemporary digital and communications technologies and an African cultural encounter with a networked and globalised system. Due to the paucity around scholarship on Africa within this field, the methodological approach evolved as an iterative development between theoretical and empirical research. This methodological development was informed by the theory of decolonising methodologies and was led by culturally responsive methods. Through thematic content analysis of the fieldwork, the identification of key themes impacted the theoretical framing of the research. Not only were new concerns identified, but particular aesthetic mechanisms became apparent in the practices of those interviewed. These brought to light the importance of decolonising methodologies within a cultural practice. This importance led to the development of a responsive exhibition, also titled Post African Futures. The exhibition was held at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in May 2015. Post African Futures as both a framework and an exhibition is central to this thesis’s contribution of new knowledge. This exhibition develops the propositions of the primary research and is therefore instrumental in strengthening a context-sensitive critical position that affords Africans the privilege of contributing to and providing insight into a globalised technology culture and its futures in relation to regions in Africa.

In the theoretical part of the master thesis are basic definitions related to the culture, cultural differences and approaches to measuring them. The key method in measuring cultural differences is the Hofstede's 5-dimensional model which is the basis for the further processing of secondary data from the Mindreader study. The goal of this work is to analyze how culture affects people's concerns regardless of how these are concerns affected by technology. The countries involved in the cultural analysis are divided into four groups according to indexes achieved in various dimensions. For each of the dimensions, there are hypotheses that are tested by Pearson´s statistical test of independence. The same statistical procedures are used for selected technologies and their impact on the life concerns.

There have been numerous calls for the radical transformation of public education in the United States. Reform initiatives are fuelled by the need to prepare students to meet the challenges of the networked knowledge society. This thesis examines the shaping of school culture within two public non-charter high schools, in different regions of the United States and with different socioeconomic characteristics, that are implementing the "New Technology" (or "New Tech") model of education: Pacific Coast High, a well-established New Tech school, and Midwest High, a school that recently transitioned to the model and is still in the process of culture change. This rapidly expanding school reform network includes 168 schools in the United States and 7 international sites in Australia. The New Tech Network, the organisation that provides training and support for these schools, explicitly emphasises the goal of changing the culture of education. They describe themselves as a network of schools that promotes a culture of trust, respect, and responsibility and uses project-based learning and "smart use" of technology to redefine teaching and learning. I employed an ethnographic multisite case study design to gain an understanding of the everyday experiences and practices of teachers, students and school leaders as they work through the process of implementing and maintaining the New Tech model. Fieldwork included six and a half months of participant observation of secondary classrooms, school meetings, professional development sessions, and New Tech training conferences as well as semi-structured interviews with teachers, students, and administrators. My analysis provides an understanding of the influence of local context, including historical background (local and national) and economic and political structures. The research findings indicate that a deliberate focus on 'culture-building', with particular values like trust, respect and responsibility, underpin and shape relationships, behaviours and educational practices, including the extensive use of ICTs. A multi-faceted approach to socialisation and enculturation, which includes extensive peer-to-peer support, is involved in inculcating values and shaping behaviours and practices. The New Tech model shifts the focus of education from a primarily individualist competitive endeavour (reflecting the broad cultural orientations of modern society in the United States) to a more collectivist approach, with students working in collaborative groups supported by the use of ICTs. Schools operate as learning communities with collaborative partnerships with the wider community. Pacific Coast High is an exemplar for the model in its fully implemented form, while Midwest High's transition to the model has been fraught with tensions as they navigate numerous context-specific challenges. I argue that real reform requires an intentional effort to change the culture of education and that pedagogy and culture have to necessitate the use of ICTs to more fully integrate them into the education process. I characterise the culture I observed in New Tech schools, particularly at Pacific Coast, as an 'ICT-facilitating school culture' with (1) a collaborative project-based focus and encouragement of students to communicate and find information themselves which pushes them to use ICTs, (2) a system of cultural values that, when internalised, operates as a means of social control, keeping students on task as they work independently and collaboratively, using ICTs, including social networking sites, and (3) an ideal classroom layout and technology infrastructure that facilitates the use of ICTs. I characterise the New Tech Network of schools as a revitalization movement, addressing the needs of a changing society by changing the culture of education.

Mobile phone technologies are transforming how young people think, work, play and relate to each other. However, a central concern for the thesis is that education policy and practice far too often resembles an industrial model that is standardised, mechanistic and linear and that rarely reflects the informational, dynamic and creative lives of young people. In particular, the educational project fails to connect with the way young people use their mobile phone technologies to multi-task, connect, and create content at a precipitous rate. This thesis focuses on the ways in which mobile phone technology is now a significant influence in the way young people develop a sense of self, and a sense of identity and agency that permeates the way they engage with education. The specific research questions that follow from this are: how are young peoples’ identities shaping the meaning and use of mobile phones within (im)material culture? How is the relationship between identity and the creation and use of social space being defined through mobile phone technology? And, taken together how might these processes of identity development influence the way the educational project develops in the future? This thesis addressed these aims by conducting a visual ethnographic study over three years, using participation observation in a sixth-form college in the UK that included video interviews with seven college students. The research has produced a conceptual framework that documents a number of key findings that include: (a) the mobile phone has an immediate symbolic value to young people providing signals about the user’s identity, or presentation of the self; (b) the mobile phone also helps facilitate the performance of lived experiences and is actively part of assisting in various forms of agency. (c) The mobile phone enables a constant flow of (re)presentations of young people that reflects a fluidity of identity that characterises key aspects of contemporary social life. Finally, (d) the mobile phone also supports and enhances the maintenance of social space through the maintenance of social groups and also crucially, the feeling of being oneself. The main conclusion drawn from this research is that too often education systems overlook that fact that learning for young people is typically, and inevitably, personal and yet at the same time located in connected, information-driven environments that are predisposed to digital technologies. Therefore, this research argues for educational policy makers and practitioners to think creatively about how to develop education in ways that fundamentally support young people in their (re)construction of a personalised landscape for learning through their mobile phone technologies.

With the recent emergence of copious and diverse scholarship that considers the discursive valence of the term "human", posthumanism has emerged as a timely and powerful interdisciplinary discourse. This study is a critical analysis of three dominant strains of the technologically oriented segment of this discourse; namely "scientific" (Ollivier Dyens), "humanist" (N. Katherine Hayles), and "organismic" (Mark B. N. Hansen) constructions of technological posthumanism. In each case, the study desublimates (and often deconstructs) the particular ideological claims that underwrite a given perspective, emphasizing the specific elements that such presumptions enable or foreclose. To this end, particular emphasis is given throughout the essay to the critical capacity of performativity, a perspective that is enacted through analyses of selected new media artworks. / 10000-01-01

This thesis examines the circulation of physical music media (78rpm records, LPs, CDs, tape) in the independent music marketplace. It is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Austin, Texas, amongst the producers of goods for the independent marketplace, independent music stores and consumers of these goods and services. Against prevailing constructivist interpretations, I will argue for the value of authenticity as an analytical anthropological concept because it unites what my research participants value about materiality, technology, and marketplace relationships. In the independent marketplace for physical music media, authenticity is a multi-local, multi-vocal phenomenon. A nexus of economic rationales, design, reproduction-technologies, histories and personal conduct interact in an ongoing process that authenticates music commodities and their marketplace. This means that particular commodities are sought out over others on account of the multi-local authenticities they anchor. The thesis firstly demonstrates how the independent music scene safeguards claims to authentic identities by constructing an opposition to the mainstream, drawing on discourses of ethical production and consumption, sound technologies, spaces of consumption and cultural production. Secondly, I will uncover how physical music media and sound-reproduction technologies are assessed as effective providers of authentic musical reproductions according to their historical contingencies and performative material capacities. Thirdly, I develop the notion of the scene (Shank 1994) from its previously genre-fixed perspective to encompass multiple musical styles operating within a common social network of producers, retailers and collectors. The pluralistic scene I describe utilises multiple musical genres and nuanced notions of materiality and authenticity to establish their complex hierarchy of sonic and technological experiences.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-27T13:54:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SHIRLEY MAR PEREIRA VIROTE.pdf: 1166683 bytes, checksum: 688b38d4c7febd7ab51a7692efde1ddc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-16 / This master's degree thesis in education entitled: "The Professional Technical Education of Medium Level integrated to medium teaching: implications of legal changes in Lula government to IFG" exposes the results of a research that has as objective to explicit public and institutional politics directed on implementation of Professional Technical Education of Medium Level integrated to medium teaching, its principles and theoretical concepts founding, as well as the development of these politics at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Goiás IFG. A new legal planning regulates this modality of teaching, in Brazil, with the approval of the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education - LDBEN in 9394/1996. It s analyzed, especially the period between 2004 and 2009, regarding to curricular organization and their possibilities to subsidize the construction of an educational project engaged to technological training citizen and emancipatory. It addresses the relations between the categories education, work, science, technology and culture in capitalist societies for the analysis of official documents of the IFG, the interviews, questionnaires, finally of data collected. I try to raise in relation to concepts of professional technical education of medium level, man and work, that guide the construction of curriculum project for this modality of teaching, on IFG (unit), the Technical Course of Buildings, class of 2007, and as the subjects in this process, understand the various elements are constituted of this modality of teaching. This is a qualitative investigation in the form of case study, where they are charged, too, document analysis, bibliographic and field that historicizes the problem discussed considering, especially the political, cultural and socioeconomic aspects involved in the process based on the thought of theorists who adopt a dialectical epistemology. As support to the data collection I realize application of semi-structured questionnaires and interviews with teachers, students, educators and managers. The first chapter develops an analysis of categories education, work, science, technology and culture from the texture existing between the historical and social relations, placing them in their entirety heterogeneous and its impact on professional qualification of men and women. In the second chapter, it is treated the Brazilian educational politic, from the approval of the new LDBEN in 9394/1996. It detains in the study of the National Curricular Guidelines for Professional Education of medium level in the period between 1997 and 2009. In the third and final chapter presents the research and their analysis. According to the theoretical studied and the data collected from talking of subjects participants in the research, a professional education emancipatory, transforming and citizen requires a curriculum developed in an integrated way, as an educational proposal opened and active, focused on the learner in its relation with the world of work and for work, which requires the generation of times and space teachers and students, to performance collective activities, the result of negotiation of personal elements to occurs the interdisciplinary process. / Esta dissertação de mestrado em educação intitulada: A Educação Profissional Técnica de Nível Médio integrada ao Ensino Médio: implicações das mudanças legais no Governo Lula para o IFG expõe os resultados de uma pesquisa que tem como objetivo explicitar as políticas públicas e institucionais voltadas para a implementação da Educação Profissional Técnica de Nível Médio integrada ao Ensino Médio, seus princípios e concepções teóricas fundantes, bem como o desenvolvimento destas políticas no Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Goiás - IFG. Um novo ordenamento legal regulamenta esta modalidade de ensino, no Brasil, com a aprovação da Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional - LDBEN, no 9.394/1996. Analisa-se, especialmente, o período compreendido entre 2004 e 2009, no que se refere à organização curricular e suas possibilidades de subsidiar a construção de um projeto educacional comprometido com a formação tecnológica cidadã e emancipadora. Abordam-se as relações entre as categorias educação, trabalho, ciência, tecnologia e cultura, nas sociedades capitalistas para as análises dos documentos oficiais do IFG, das entrevistas, questionários, enfim dos dados coletados. Procuro levantar em relação às concepções de educação profissional técnica de nível médio, homem e trabalho, que norteiam a construção do projeto curricular para essa modalidade de ensino, no IFG (sede), Curso Técnico de Edificações, turma 2007, e como os sujeitos, neste processo, compreendem os diversos elementos constituidores dessa modalidade de ensino. Trata-se de uma investigação qualitativa, na forma de estudo de caso, onde se recorre, também, à análise documental, bibliográfica e de campo que historiciza a problemática abordada considerando, sobretudo os aspectos políticos, culturais e sócio-econômicos envolvidos no processo embasado no pensamento de teóricos, que adotam a epistemologia dialética. Como suporte à coleta de dados realizo aplicação de questionários semi-estruturados e entrevista com professores, alunos, pedagogos e gestores. No primeiro capítulo, desenvolve-se uma análise das categorias educação, trabalho, ciência, tecnologia e cultura a partir da tessitura existente entre as relações históricas e sociais, situando-as na sua totalidade heterogênea e em seu impacto na qualificação profissional de homens e mulheres. No segundo capítulo, trata-se da política educacional brasileira, a partir da aprovação da nova LDBEN, no 9.394/1996. Detém-se no estudo das Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação Profissional de nível técnico no período compreendido entre 1997 e 2009. No terceiro e último capítulo, apresenta-se a pesquisa e respectivas análises. De acordo com os teóricos estudados e com os dados coletados das falas dos sujeitos participantes da pesquisa, uma educação profissional emancipadora, transformadora e cidadã exige um currículo desenvolvido na forma integrada, como uma proposta educativa aberta e ativa, centrada no sujeito aprendente na sua relação com o mundo do trabalho e para o trabalho, o que exige a geração de tempos e espaço docentes e discentes, para a realização de atividades coletivas, fruto da negociação dos elementos pessoais para que ocorra o processo interdisciplinar.

Submitted by Celso Magalhaes (celsomagalhaes@ufrrj.br) on 2018-03-19T14:12:28Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2015 - Wagner Fernandes Delgado.pdf: 1183957 bytes, checksum: b3f1c616325c77496cfc2cea0479e480 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-19T14:12:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2015 - Wagner Fernandes Delgado.pdf: 1183957 bytes, checksum: b3f1c616325c77496cfc2cea0479e480 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-25 / This master thesis in education entitled: "the professional education, new perspectives facing the changes of legislation-a case study of the students of the technical course in surveying the Technical College of UFRRJ" exposes the results of a survey that aims to clarify the reflections of new public and institutional policies occasioned by changes in Professional Technical Education of Middle Level, having as a laboratory to study the school linked to the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), the Technical College of UFRRJ (CTUR). From the publication of law n?. 9,394/1996-Law of national education Bases and Guidelines (LDB), and Opinion n?. 04/99, who in his Art. 7?, item I and II, comes to modular courses, regulated by Decree n? 5.154/2004, the Technical College of UFRRJ reshaped its curriculum and offer modular courses and their subsequent array Technical course in Surveying, until then, it was offered at the Institute of Technology, in the form of an agreement with the FAPUR (Foundation for Support of Scientific and Technological Research of UFRRJ). It is a qualitative research, in the form of case study, where it is contested, too, the documentary analysis, field and that the problems addressed, historicist especially the cultural and socio-political aspects involved in the process based on the theoretical thinking, which adopt the dialectical epistemology. How to perform data collection support application of semi-structured questionnaires and interviews with teachers, students and administrators. The present study focuses on the technical course in Surveying, aiming at the identification of the profile of students seeking technical training. It has been found through interviews and questionnaires with the Faculty and students of the technical course in Surveying the changes were beneficial in their range, but there are problems that need to be resolved, such as the high dropout rates in the first module, the educational deficit from the poor quality of the formation of the secondary school, causing a low yield in the disciplines of technical knowledge / Esta disserta??o de mestrado em educa??o intitulada: ?A Educa??o Profissional, novas perspectivas frente ?s mudan?as da legisla??o - estudo de caso dos alunos do curso t?cnico em agrimensura do Col?gio T?cnico da UFRRJ? exp?e os resultados de uma pesquisa que tem como objetivo explicitar os reflexos das novas pol?ticas p?blicas e institucionais ocasionadas pelas mudan?as na Educa??o Profissional T?cnica de N?vel M?dio, tendo como laborat?rio de estudo a escola vinculada ? Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), o Col?gio T?cnico da UFRRJ (CTUR). A partir da publica??o da Lei n? 9.394/1996 - Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educa??o Nacional - (LDB), e do Parecer n? 04/99, que em seu Art. 7?, Inciso I e II, trata de cursos modulares, regulamentados atrav?s do Decreto n? 5.154/2004, o Col?gio T?cnico da UFRRJ reformulou a sua grade curricular, e passou a ofertar cursos modulares subsequentes, e ter em sua matriz o curso de T?cnico em Agrimensura, que at? ent?o, era oferecido no Instituto de Tecnologia, na forma de conv?nio com a FAPUR (Funda??o de Apoio ? Pesquisa Cient?fica e Tecnol?gica da UFRRJ). Trata-se de uma investiga??o qualitativa, na forma de estudo de caso, onde se recorre, tamb?m, ? an?lise documental, bibliogr?fica e de campo que historicista a problem?tica abordada considerando, sobretudo os aspectos pol?ticos, culturais e socioecon?micos envolvidos no processo embasado no pensamento de te?ricos, que adotam a epistemologia dial?tica. Como suporte ? coleta de dados realizo aplica??o de question?rios semiestruturados e entrevista com professores, alunos e gestores. O presente estudo focaliza o Curso T?cnico em Agrimensura, objetivando a identifica??o do perfil dos alunos que procuram a forma??o t?cnica. Foi constatado atrav?s de entrevistas e aplica??o de question?rio com os docentes e alunos do Curso T?cnico em Agrimensura que as mudan?as foram ben?ficas em sua amplitude, mas existem problemas que precisam ser solucionados, como as altas taxas de evas?o no primeiro m?dulo, o d?ficit educacional proveniente da m? qualidade da forma??o da escola secundaria, causando um baixo rendimento nas disciplinas de conhecimentos t?cnicos mais apurados

<p><strong><p>Ringdansens bostadsområde som är del av Hyresbostäder i Norrköping miljöanpassades under slutet av 1990-talet. Sopstationer med fraktioner för olika avfall infördes. För många hushåll har detta system inneburit problem. Hyresbostäder vill försöka åtgärdaproblemen genom att göra bättre och tydligare information i soprummen.</p><p>Genom intervjustudier undersöks hushållens önskemål och klagomål på det nuvarande systemet, den egna hanteringen av sopor samt motivationen bakom deras handlande. Resultaten visar atthushållen efterfrågar bättre och tydligare information. Vissa av soprummen upplevs som skräpiga och ofräscha. Hushållen sorterar mestadels av pliktkänsla samt av ekonomiska och miljömässiga orsaker.</p></strong></p>

Vi möts av mängder med bilder av teknik och vetenskap i populärkulturens verk. Dessa bilder kan ses som representationer av vår verklighet och bidrar också till att skapa våra uppfattningar om världen. Denna uppsats fokuserar på att studera just de populärvetenskapliga bilderna av teknik och vetenskap som finns representerade samt hur dessa bilder är en del av sin kontext. Genom att närmare studera filmerna Demolition Man och Sunshine, utifrån frågor om tekniken skildras som ond, god eller neutral, hur vetenskapsmannen gestaltas samt hur förhållandet mellan människa och maskin ser ut, nystar denna uppsats fram de bilder av teknik och vetenskap som återfinns i dessa två verk.